Coptic text proofing with Hunspell

Hunspell is a very powerful spelling
library / utility with Unicode Support. Hunspell is the spell checker of
LibreOffice,
OpenOffice.org,
Mozilla Firefox 3 & Thunderbird,
Google Chrome, and it is also
used by proprietary software packages.
Hunspell is open source mainly written for Linux in C and is available as
source code from
http://hunspell.sourceforge.net, but you should be less interested in using
hunspell directly under Linux. For those who wish that, they can download
the language files I have written for Coptic
here
These language files include all the Coptic (Bohairic) words of the liturgies and
the New Testament.
The .tgz file contains also a sample test file in the format used by Abiword and in
uft8.

Coptic Spell Checking in OpenOffice
(for Linux & Windows)

OpenOffice "knows" Coptic and
can deal with it. This means, that you will find the
language "Coptic" in the pull-down menu of the languages. If your have installed Coptic
key map, you can write Coptic in OpenOffice, and will be able to use all functions
like searching, changing to upper or lower case etc.

Starting from OpenOffice version 3.0, the installation of a coptic spell checker is quite simple:

The Spell Checker shall work now. Try to open any Unicode coptic text file, for example
this sample text file
or this sample odt file.
Don't forget choosing a Unicode font which support Coptic, and setting the
language to Coptic in the dialog:
Format--> Character..
You should see a small Symbol in the language
selection spin left to the entry "Coptic", indicating that the dictionary has been
installed correctly. Please notice, that maybe you
have to restart OpenOffice to see this symbol. This also means, that you have to exit
the quick launcher (under Windows).

Right clicking the mouse under a mis-spelled word displays suggestions
in a pop-up menu. The font maybe ugly, small, unreadable or all of these. This applies
also for the font in the "Spelling and Grammar..." Dialog. You can change this.

In the same Dialog select
Font and check the "Apply replacement table". Replace the font:
Open Symbol
with for example: "ArialCoptic" or any other Unicode font you like,
which supports the Coptic glyphs.
In certain versions, the default UI font is
Andale Sans UI instead
of "Open Symbol". Try replacing both fonts with a Unicode Coptic font.

Coptic Spell Checking for Abiword

Abiword uses a spell checking wrapper
callled Enchant which
can work with several front ends. Hunspell is one of them. The installation process is different
in Linux and Windows.

Installation for Windows
The latest stable version 2.8.6 can only recognize mis-spelled words by
highlighting them (curly red lines). For achieving this, create a new directory under
the dictionary directory of Abiword (for example: C:\Program Files\AbiWord\dictionary)
and call it "myspell". Then copy the hunspell files for Coptic there.
(unzip to get the cop-Eg.dic and cop-Eg.aff files)
According to the developer of Abiword, the next version 3.0 will have full unicode
support and hopefully full spell checking support.

Installation for Linux

Follow the following steps:

Get and install hunspell as
described here. Download the dictionary files from
there, create a new directory in you home directory and name it .enchant. Create a subdirectory in
.enchant and name it
hunspell. There you
have to copy the downloaded and untarred dictionary files.

If you have installed hunspell with ncurses-support, then you can
test, if it works by typing:

hunspell -d cop_EG
<sample_text>

Install at least one Unicode font with Coptic glyphs. I have re-mapped some famous
fonts in the publich domain (CS Coptic) and merged them into the FreeSerif Unicode
font. I advice you to use the FreeSerifAthanasius, since I have adjusted the ancher
points for the combining marks in it (for accurate definition the position of the
Jinkim). To get this font and few other follow this link.

Get the source code of Enchant
, install it and make sure, that when running ./configure it reports that it
found hunspell.

Create a file in the directory .enchant and name it
enchant.ordering, in
which you define for which language Enchant shall use which spell checker. It might
look something like:

Download the patch I have
prepared and apply it to the base directory of Abiword. This patch adds the language
"Coptic" in the pull-down menu of languages in Abiword. Move to the parent directory of
Abiword and type:

patch -p0 <
abiword-2.4.6-coptic.patch

Make sure that all the packages that Abiword needs to compile are installed on your
system. You will probably need only to compile the core abi-package itself (the
abi sub-directory in
abiword-2.4.6). All
other packages should be either already installed on your system (like iconv), or are not needed for the
Linux installation. If some library is missing, consult the manual of you
Linux-distribution to learn about installing it. Then compile abi and install it.

cd abi./configuremakemake install

Start Abiword, load the sample file that comes with the Coptic dictionary files and
test if it works. If not, make sure that you are using a Unicode Coptic font. Check, if
the text is also recognized as cop_EG (should
be displayed in the lower bar of Abiword at the right, see the screenshot above).

To write your own text, you have to install a Coptic keymap as described in this page. Be aware that in contrary to the old
CS-Coptic fonts (non Unicode), the Jinkim and the above bar (in fact all combining
diacritical marks) have to be entered after the letter not
before.